Hands
by Rugsrat
Summary: Gabrielle contemplates anatomy, and it's meaning, late at night. Implied XenaGabrielle. Drabble. No Longer a oneshot!
1. Hands

_**A.N.: **So... Yeah... I've been watching Xena non-stop recently. I found the entire series on YouTube. Find SpikeBad, he's got them all, Hercules too. Anyway, this came to me before I fell alsleep last night, it's just a drabble, and probably not very good. Implied Xena X Gabrielle, nothing really overt. This is just what happens when you watch Xena at 2:30 in the morning. Enjoy. Oh... right, I do not own the characters of Xena and Gabrielle. They are the sole property of Renaissance pictures and whoever else is pertinent. I am not making any profit in the use of these characters, and do not claim any ownership of them._

Gabrielle was up later than Xena, again. She simply could not sleep, and she was not sure as to why. She had a slight pain in her shoulder from a minor scuffle earlier in the day. One of the thugs they had fought had managed to scratch her with his blade, but it was minor and already taken care of. No, that was not why she couldn't sleep.

She decided that it would be better to give up on trying to find the reason, and rather simply try to slumber, but as minds are want to do, hers began to wander. She thought about all of her adventures that had happened to them, all of the pain, as well as joy that they had gone through, and all of the changes that had happened to them. She held her hands up to trace patterns in the sky, a habit she had had since she was a young girl, and noticed them for the first time in a while. They were rough, calloused and the back of her left hand had a fading bruise on it. Her hands were no longer those of a naïve girl. No, they were the hands of a person who had experienced much, even if the rest of her didn't seem to fit the bill. Gabrielle smiled a little, all of her experiences, she would not trade them for the world. Never. After all, if she traded them, then she would be trading Xena away as well. Now a frown graced Gabrielle's normally cheerful face, as she thought about her friend, and her hands.

Xena's hands were very rough through years of holding weapons and running around the world. Those hands had killed more people than Gabrielle could count, had shed more blood than could be held in a small lake, and yet, there was something infinitely gentle and expressive about those hands. It became easy to tell the tall warrior's mood just by watching her hands. When they were moving slowly, Xena was happy and at ease, but when threatened, her hands were like lightning in her quest to defend herself, and her companion.

It was increasingly amazing, Gabrielle thought, about what Xena was able to do with her hands. She could probably lift a horse if she had to, and could certainly take care of several men at a time. But in the time Gabrielle had known her friend, she had seen those hands do so much more than that. Xena's hands had brought her back from the dead, had healed her wounds, had embraced her as family, had soothed her aching muscles through massage.

Those hands, like their owner, had many skills. The bard smiled faintly as she thought about all that those hands had done for her. And the smile widened as one strong hand came to rest on her stomach and a low voice whispered in her ear, "Will you go to sleep already?"

"Sure Xena. Goodnight."

"'Night." Xena muttered, and placed a soft kiss on top of her friend's head before pulling the blonde girl in closer and falling back into the land of dreams. Gabrielle followed a moment later, but not before intertwining her fingers with those of her friend's.


	2. Eyes

She could not do it, sleep that is. It seemed that just as Gabrielle had gotten over her insomnia, Xena caught it. It was enough to make her want to scream in annoyance, but she decided that was not a good idea, if only because such an action would wake Gabrielle, and well, she simply did not want to do that. With a shake of her head, which sent her long black hair over her shoulder in a dark wave, she softly got up from the bedroll that she shared with her friend and made her way to the other side of the fire and started to do an easy set of motions that normally she used to calm herself before a difficult battle, but had set aside after she found she was able to just focus for some unknown reason, mostly because Gabrielle was a calming presence for her, she just exuded serenity and wisdom. Her companion's presence warmed her as nothing had before, least of all her violent lust for blood before she met Hercules, but Gabrielle was what kept her rooted.

Hercules was a nice man, but he was enough to drive her crazy, he just seemed… fake. It was as though his humbleness and joviality was a ploy used to garner sympathy from the public who would normally be quick to judge him for his past actions. He had killed his own family. That was a line that even Xena had never dreamed of crossing, even when under the Fury's spell. No, he was insincere to her. Gabrielle however, she was undoubtedly the single most kind and generous person that she had met. Where Xena was quick to judge and act, Gabrielle was there to make sure that there was a voice of compassion where it often was hard to find.

Xena started another slow set of movements and continued thinking of what made Gabrielle, a simple bard, so special. She had spirit, and there was certainly intelligence and cleverness to her. But the thing that Xena kept coming back to were her eyes. Gabrielle's eyes were possibly the most expressive part of her. Every flicker of emotion that she had screamed from those soft orbs. It was like reading one of her stories. Yes, her eyes were what did it. It was the conviction she saw that first night around the fire that had convinced her, and that conviction had never faltered, even when the rest of her had. Even as Gabrielle lay dying in her arms as the Persian army bore down on them, the conviction had been stronger than any Xena had witnessed aside from her own, and it was enough that tears had threatened to burst forth, and she had to leave to keep from crying because it was so unlike her. Crying was simply not something that a Warrior Princess did.

It really was an amazing thing what Gabrielle's eyes did to her. And she sat down in front of the fire watching their owner sleep soundly for the first time in nearly two weeks. The bard tossed a bit in her sleep, trying to find the warmth that had left her moments before, and those green pools were unveiled, the tired but trusting gaze meeting her own. "Not you too. Come to bed." She demanded sleepily, and patted the spot behind her.

Xena smiled and settled back into the bedroll behind her friend and companion, who snuggled close. It was cool that night, and best to stay together. Not to mention that she would end up like this anyway, with one arm wrapped around her waist, the most comfortable she ever got. "G'night."


End file.
